Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  “Oh, Kunta!” Whirling around, her eyes wide with shock, loudly she blurted, “Slave trader done been here!” Then, lowering her voice, “I heared Cato’s whippoorwill whistle from out in de fiel’ an’ run to de front window. Minute I seed dat citified-lookin’ white man gittin’ off his hoss, I jes’ smelt what he was! Lawd a mercy! I open de do’ by time he got up de steps. He ax to see my massa or missis. I say my missis in de graveyard, an my massa a doctor off tendin’ sick peoples, an’ no tellin’ what time o’ night he git back. Den he throw me dis smirkin’ look an’ han’ me a l’il card wid printin’ on it an’ say give dat to massa an’ tell ’im he be back. Well, I’se feared not to give massa de card—finally jes’ stuck it on his desk.”

  “Bell!” a call came from the living room.

  She nearly dropped her spoon. She whispered, “Wait! I be back!” Kunta waited—hardly daring to breathe, expecting the worst—until he saw the returning Bell’s expression of immense relief.

  “He say he want early supper! De card gone from de desk where I lef’ it, but he don’ say nothin’ ’bout it, an’ fo’ sho’ I ain’t neither!”

  After supper, Bell filled in the field hands on the developments after Cato’s warning whistle, and Aunt Sukey started crying. “Lawd, y’all think massa gwine sell some us?”

  “Ain’t nobody never gon’ beat me no mo’!” declared Cato’s big wife, Beulah.

  A long, heavy silence fell. Kunta could think of nothing to say; but he knew he wasn’t going to tell them about the auction.

  “Well,” said the fiddler finally, “massa ain’t one o’ dem wid a whole lotta spare niggers. An he is one dem got plenty money, so ain’t needin’ to sell no niggers to pay debts, like a whole lot doin’.”

  Kunta hoped the others found the fiddler’s comforting effort more convincing than he did. Bell looked a little hopeful. “I knows massa, or anyhow, I thinks I does. Long as we’s all been here, he ain’t never sol’ off nobody—leas’ways nobody ’cept dat buggy driver Luther, an’ dat ’cause Luther drawed dat map to he’p a gal try to ’scape.” Bell hesitated before continuing. “Naw!” she said. “Massa wouldn’t git rid o’ none us widout no good cause—any y’all speck he would?” But nobody answered.

  CHAPTER 79

  Kunta’s ears were riveted upon the massa’s dialogue with a favorite one of his cousins, who was being brought home for dinner, as they sat in the rear of the rolling buggy.

  “At a county seat auction the other day,” the massa was saying, “I was astonished that everyday field hands are selling for twice to three times what they fetched just a few years ago. And from advertisements I read in the Gazette, carpenters, brickmasons, blacksmiths—in fact, slaves who are really experienced in about any trade, leatherworkers, sailmakers, musicians, whatever, are going for as much as twenty-five hundred dollars apiece.”

  “It’s the same everywhere since this new cotton gin!” exclaimed the massa’s cousin. “More than a million slaves already in the country, I’ve been told, yet the ships still can’t seem to bring enough new ones to supply those Deep South bottomlands trying to meet the demands of the northern mills.”

  “What’s concerning me is that too many otherwise sensible planters, in their eagerness for quick profits, may be starting to see our state of Virginia eventually losing its best quality of slaves, even the best breeding stock,” said Massa Waller, “and that’s just plain foolishness!”

  “Foolishness? Hasn’t Virginia got more slaves than she needs? They cost more to maintain than most are worth in work.”

  “Maybe today,” said the massa, “but how do we know our needs five, ten years from today? Who would have predicted such a cotton boom as this ten years ago? And I’ve never gone along with your very popular talk of slaves keep costing so much. It seems to me on any place that’s just halfway well organized, don’t they plant, raise, and harvest what they eat? And they’re usually prolific—every pickaninny that’s born is worth money to you, too. A lot are fully capable of learning skills to make them even more valuable. I’m convinced that slaves and land, in that order, are a man’s best investments today. I’d never sell either of mine for the same reason—they’re the backbone of our system.”

  “The system may be starting to change without many realizing it,” said the massa’s cousin. “Look at these upstart rednecks strutting around as if they’ve entered the planter class just because they’ve bought one or two broken-down slaves to finish working them to death at building up their pitiful little crops of cotton and tobacco. They’re beyond contempt, but rednecks seemed to breed even faster than niggers. Just in sheer numbers they may begin to encroach on our land before long as well as on our labor.”

  “Well, I don’t think we have much to worry about”—the massa chuckled, seemingly amused at his thought—“not as long as poor whites are competing with free blacks to buy the cast-off slaves.”

  His cousin joined him in laughter. “Yes, isn’t it unbelievable? I hear that half the free niggers in the cities work day and night to save enough money to buy their kinfolk, and then set them free.”

  “It’s why we have so many free blacks in the South,” said the massa.

  “I think we’re permitting too many of them in Virginia,” said his cousin. “It’s not just how they’re sapping our labor supply by buying up their kin and creating more free blacks They’re also at the root of most uprisings. We don’t ever want to forget that blacksmith in Richmond.”

  “True!” said Massa Waller. “But I still think that with enough good, strict laws to keep them in their places, and proper examples made of troublemakers, then most of them can serve useful purposes—in the cities. I’m told that right now, they just about dominate in most of the trades.”

  “In the traveling I do, I’ve seen myself how widespread that is,” said his cousin. “They’re warehouse and waterfront workers, merchants, undertakers, gardeners. They’re the best cooks, also musicians, of course! And I’ve heard there’s not even one white barber in the whole city of Lynchburg. I’d have to grow a beard! I’d never let one of them near my throat with a razor!”

  They both laughed. But then the massa grew serious. “I think the cities may be spawning for us a bigger social problem than free blacks—I mean these slick-tongued con-man slave traders. I hear most are former tavern owners, speculators, jackleg teachers, lawyers, preachers, and the like. Three or four have approached me in the county seat offering sight-unseen prices for my slaves, and one even had the nerve to leave his card here at the house! Far as I’m concerned, they’re totally vultures without scruples.”

  They had arrived at Massa Waller’s house, and Kunta—seeming as if he hadn’t heard a word they’d said—jumped down to help them out. By the time they’d gone inside, washed up after the dusty ride, then settled in the drawing room and called Bell to bring them drinks, she and everyone else on the plantation knew from Kunta the vital fact that the massa had no plans to sell them. And not long after supper, Kunta repeated to his rapt slave-row audience the entire conversation, as best he could duplicate it.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Sister Mandy spoke. “Massa an his cousin talkin’ ’bout free niggers savin’ up to buy kinfolks free. I wants to know how dem free niggers got deyselves free!”

  “Well,” said the fiddler, “whole lotta city slaves’ massas lets ’em learn trades, den hires ’em out fo’ pay an’ gives ’em some de money, like massa do wid me. So wid ten, fi’teen years o’ savin’, if’n he real lucky, a hire-out nigger can maybe give his massa de money to buy hisself free.”

  “Dat why you keeps so busy fiddlin’?”’ asked Cato.

  “Ain’t doin’ it ’cause I loves to see white folks dance,” said the fiddler.

  “You got ’nough to buy yo’self yet?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’ be here fo’ you to ax dat question.” Everyone laughed.

  “Is you close, anyways?” Cato persisted.

  “Don’ give up, does you?”
said the fiddler, exasperated. “I’se closer’n I was las’ week, but not close I’se gwine be nex’ week.”

  “Awright, but when you gits it, what you gwine do?”

  “Split de win’ brudder! Headin’ Nawth! Hear some dem northern free niggers livin’ better’n plenty white folks, an’ dat soun’ good to me. Speck I move in nex’ door to one dem high-tone mulattoes an start talkin high-toned an’ dressin’ up in silk like dey does, an’ start to playin’ de harp an’ gwine to meetin’s to ’scuss books an raisin’ flowers an’ sich as dat.”

  When the laughter lessened, Aunt Sukey asked, “What y’all think ’bout what white folks always says dat dem mulattoes an’ high yallers do so good cause de whole lot o’ white blood dey got in ’em make ’em smarter’n we is?”

  “Well, white mens sho’ mixes roun’ ’nough dey blood!” Bell said noncommittally.

  “Watch yo’ talk bout my mammy’s oberseer!” the fiddler exclaimed, trying to look insulted. Cato almost fell off his chair laughing till Beulah gave his head a whack with the back of her hand.

  “Git serious here!” the fiddler went on. “Aunt Sukey ax a question I ’tends to answer! If you jedgin’ by sich as me, den you know light-skinned niggers got to be smart! Or take dat brown-skin Benjamin Banneker what white folks calls a genius wid figgers, even studyin’ de stars an’ moon—but whole heap o’ smart niggers black like y’all, too!”

  Bell said, “I done heared massa talk ’bout a James Derham nigger doctor in New Orleans. White doctor what teached ’im claim he know more’n he do, an’ he black as dey gits, too.”

  “Tell you anudder one,” said the fiddler. “Dat Prince Hall what started dat nigger Masonic Order! I seen pictures some dem big preachers what started dem nigger churches, most of’em so black you couldn’t hardly see ’em less’n dey eyes was open. An’ what bout dat Phyllis Wheatley what writes dem pomes white folks say so fine, an dat Gustavus Vassa what writes books?” The fiddler glanced in Kunta’s direction. “Dey’s both straight-from-Africa niggers, not nary drop o’ white folks’ blood, an’ dey sho’ don’t soun’ all dat dumb to me!” Then laughing, the fiddler said, “’Cose, dey’s always dumb black niggers—take Cato here ...” He sprang up and ran with Cato two steps behind. “Cotch you, I’ll dumb you upside de head!” Cato shouted.

  When the others stopped guffawing, Kunta spoke. “Laugh all y’all want. All niggers de same to white folks. One drop o’ nigger blood means nigger if you’s even whiter’n dem—an I’se seed plenty dat is.”

  It was about a month later when the fiddler returned from one of his trips bearing news that he had seen elating whites everywhere he’d been—and that plunged slave row into gloom: The French leader named Napoleon had sent across the big water a huge army which, after much fighting and bloodshed, had taken Haiti back from the blacks and their liberator, General Toussaint. Invited to dinner by the victorious French army’s general, Toussaint had made the mistake of accepting; during the meal, the waiters seized and trussed him, and rushed him onto a ship bound for France, where he had been taken in chains before Napoleon, who had plotted the entire treachery.

  Being the black General Toussaint’s greatest admirer on the plantation, Kunta took the news harder than anyone else. He was still sitting dejectedly in the fiddler’s cabin when the last of the others trudged silently out.

  “I knows how you felt ’bout dat Toussaint,” said the fiddler, “an’ I don’ want you to think I takes it light, but I got a piece o’ news I jes’ cain’t hol’ in another minute!”

  Kunta glanced grimly at the fiddler, further offended that he looked ready to pop open with happiness. What news could be so good as to affect anyone’s proper respect for the humiliation of the greatest black leader of all time?

  “I done it!” The fiddler was a study of excitement. “I didn’t say nothin’ jes’ a month back when Cato axed how much I had saved up, but den I was jes’ a few dollars short—an now I jes’ done made it wid dis trip! Took me playin’ over nine hunnud times fo’ white folks to dance, an I sho’ di’n’t know if I’d ever make it, so I di’n’t talk ’bout it wid nobody—not even you—’til I done it! African, I got dat seven hunnud dollars what massa long time ago tol’ me I’d have to earn to buy myself free!”

  Kunta was too thunderstruck to speak.

  “Looka here!” said the fiddler, ripping open his mattress and dumping the contents out onto the floor; hundreds of dollar bills eddied about their feet. “An’ looka here!” he said, dragging a gunny sack out from under the bed and emptying it, clinking, on top of the bills—hundreds of coins of every denomination.

  “Well, African, you gwine say sump’n, or jes’ stan’ dere wid yo’ mouf’ open?”

  “Don’t know what to say,” said Kunta.

  “How ’bout ’gratulations?”

  “Jes’ seem too good to be true.”

  “It true awright. I done counted it a thousan’ times. Even got’nough extra to buy me a cardboard suitcase!”

  Kunta just couldn’t believe it. The fiddler was really going to be free! It wasn’t just a dream. Kunta felt like laughing and crying—for himself as much as for his friend.

  The fiddler knelt and began scooping up the money. “Look, you deaf’n dumb ’bout dis till tomorrow mawnin’, awright? Dat when I goes to see massa an’ tell ’im he seven hunnud dollars richer! You gwine be glad as he is to see me go?”

  “Glad fo’ you. Not fo’ me,” said Kunta.

  “If you tryin’ to make me feel so sorry for you, I buy you free, too, you gwine wait a spell! Done took me thutty-three years fiddlin’ to freedom!”

  By the time Kunta got back to his own cabin, he had begun to miss the fiddler already, and Bell mistook his sadness for grief about Toussaint, so he didn’t have to hide—or explain—what he was feeling.

  When he went by the fiddler’s cabin the next morning after feeding the horses, he found it empty, so he went to ask Bell if he was in with the massa.

  “He lef’ an hour ago. Ack like he seen a ghost. What de matter wid ’im, an’ what he want wid massa anyways?”

  “What he say when he come out?” asked Kunta.

  “Don’ say nothin’. Tol’ you he went pas’ me like I wasn’t dere.”

  Without another word, Kunta walked out the screen door and back toward slave row—with Bell shouting after him, “Now where you goin’?” And when he didn’t answer: “Dat right! Don’t tell me nothin’! I’se jes’ yo’ wife!” Kunta had disappeared.

  After asking around, knocking at every cabin door, even peeking inside the privy and shouting “Fiddler!” in the barn, Kunta headed down along the fencerow. When he had gone a good way, he heard it—sad, slow strains of a song he had heard blacks at an “O Lawd” camp meeting singing once ... only this time it was being played on a fiddle. The fiddler’s music was always rollicking and happy; this sounded almost as if the fiddle were sobbing, drifting up along the fencerow.

  Quickening his stride, Kunta came within sight of an oak tree spreading half over a brook down near the edge of Massa Waller’s property. Approaching closer, he saw the fiddler’s shoes extending from behind the tree. Just then, the music stopped—and so did Kunta, feeling suddenly like an intruder. He stood still, waiting for the fiddling to resume, but the drone of bees and the burble of the stream were the only sounds that broke the silence. At last, almost sheepishly, Kunta moved around the tree and faced the fiddler. One glance was all he needed to know what had happened—the light was gone from his friend’s face; the familiar sparkle in his eyes had been extinguished.

  “You need some mattress stuffin’?” the fiddler’s voice was cracking. Kunta said nothing. Tears began to drip down along the fiddler’s cheeks; he brushed them furiously away as if they were acid, and the words came in a rush: “I tells ’im I finally got de money to buy me free—ev’y penny of it. He hem an’ haw a minute; an’ look at de ceilin’. Den he ’gratulate me on savin’ up so much. But den he tell me if I wants to, de seven hu
nnud could be a down payment,’cause in doin’ business he got to consider how de slave prices done gone way up since dat cotton gin come in. He say now he couldn’t ’cept no less’n fifteen hunnud at de leas’ fo’ a good money-makin’ fiddler like me, dat he could git twenty-five hunnud fo’ if he was to sell me to somebody else. He say he real sorry, but he hope I understand business is business, an he have to git fair return on his vestment.” The fiddler began openly sobbing now. “He say bein’ free ain’t all it cracked up to be nohow, an’ he wish me de bes’ luck in comin’ up wid de res’ if I insists ... an’ he tell me keep up de good work ... an’ when I go out, would I ax Bell to bring’im some coffee.”

  He fell silent. Kunta just stood there.

  “Dat son-of-a-bitch!” the fiddler screamed suddenly, and flinging back his arm, he hurled his fiddle into the stream.

  Kunta waded in to get it, but even before he reached down, he could see it was broken.

  CHAPTER 80

  When Kunta got home with the massa well into one night a few months later, Bell was less irritated than concerned that they were both too tired even to eat the good supper she’d prepared. For a strange fever had begun to strike throughout the county, and the two men had been leaving earlier each morning and coming back later each night in the massa’s efforts as the county’s doctor to keep up with the spreading contagion.

  Kunta was so worn out, slumped in his rocking chair, staring vacantly at the fire, that he didn’t even notice Bell feeling his forehead and taking off his shoes. And half an hour passed before he realized suddenly that Kizzy wasn’t on his lap, as usual, showing him some new plaything she’d made or prattling about what she’d done that day.

  “Where dat chile?” he asked finally.

  “Put ’er to bed an hour ago,” said Bell.

  “She ain’t sick, is she?” he asked, sitting up.

  “Naw, jes’ tuckered out from play. Missy Anne come over today.” Kunta was too exhausted even to feel his customary annoyance, but Bell changed the subject anyway. “While Roosby waitin’ to take ’er home, he tell me he heared de fiddler playin’ other night at a ball he took Massa John to over in Fredericksburg. He say he didn’t hardly recognize de fiddlin’, it jes’ don’t soun’ de same. I didn’t tell ’im de fiddler hisself ain’t de same since he find out he ain’t free.”